How the fire feels while burning
by absolutely-enraptured
Summary: When Rose's mother told her that she was going to marry Cal, she had laughed in her face. She is not laughing now. One-shot


_**A/N: So in honor of Titanic being re-released I've decided to write a little fanfic up really quick. This takes place during the movie, basically this is a sort of alternative to what happens after the party.**_

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><p>"Someday, you will be married," Rose's father had told her when she was little.<p>

She was young, far too young to have any misconceptions of the idea. Her dreams of marriage were covered in white veils, broad smiles, and a handsome prince, who she could converse with endlessly. When her mother told her that she was going to marry Cal, she had laughed in her face.

She is not laughing now.

The weeks of their betrothal have ticked by, she has learned to forget it most of the time: when she reads, or when she's studying paintings, she forgets; but when Cal looks at her with frightening ownership, she remembers. She remembers that she does not love him or even like him. When she loves someone, she knows it will be the stuff of stories, the need rooted in her heart. It's her heart she's supposed to be following, isn't it?

Her heart doesn't miss Cal when he's gone and there's something that always been off, his asymmetries don't match up to hers in such a way that they seem more symmetrical together than either could account for on their own.

She can't even imagine their wedding day, looking up into the cold, covetous face of Cal, but when she squeezes her eyes shut to picture them, the eyes she pictures against the black backs of her eyelids are not Cal's but another's, the color of seafoam on a cloudy day, glinting with youth and spirit in the dark, _Jack's—_

__No__. __

Rose shakes her head, pulling on the neckline of her sleeping gown, the air in the room suddenly stagnant. A headache is scraping at her skull and she raises herself on an elbow in her bed. She doesn't want to go down this path, it isn't proper. Then again, these thoughts are her own, it doesn't mean she will act upon them. But if she does, whose to say what's improper?

She closes her eyes and considers this.

Morals are seldom evident in this society, anyhow, but virtuous behaviour is always expected. If one must do something they aren't supposed to, it must be done in secret. That is not how she will go about maintaining her whatever this thing she had with Jack was, she thinks, she's tired of secrets.

Although, she doesn't exactly trust men that look like he does, like something that she could want so much. She decides then that she will no longer indulge his requests of her and she will not speak to him. It'll be easier this way, she promises herself.

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><p>"Rose."<p>

Rose turns around immediately, book clutched in hand, and Jack Dawson skids into her, stammering as he rights himself. He carries his sketchbook and she refuses to look it or at his face, to ask what he's doing here or to speak to him; she nods out of politeness.

"Rose? It's me, Jack?"

She freezes. She doesn't want to answer but she can't ignore him. "I know who you are," She says, smile-less and carefully blank-faced, and she thinks she can't leave fast enough, but she doesn't: his smile outpaces her.

"So what? We can't even talk now," He says, shaking his head.

"You got your reward for saving me, Mr. Dawson," She tells him, hands folding.

"So, you're going to ex-communicate me now?"

"Glad to see we're on the same page here," Rose starts off on her way.

"Oh, come on," He starts walking backwards, one hands in his pocket, watching her with a smile. "I couldn't want to come see you without an ulterior motive."

She smothers a smile and doesn't answer.

"Fine, then," He shrugs. "Let's start over." He outstretches his hand to her. "I'm Jack Dawson."

She laughs, she likes him. She wishes it was as simple as that.

"Let me walk you to wherever you're going," he says.

"No," She says, but she is smiling now.

"Why not?"

"It's not proper, if Cal saw you—"

"Concerned for my safety?" He clasps his hands over his heart comically. "I'm touched."

She clenches her jaw and sets her fists on her hips. "Fine. You can walk me to the upper deck, but that's it."

They get to the upper decks, and she walks around, looking out at the vast sea. All the while, Jack watches.

"D'you need me to do anything?" He asks at one point.

"I need you to stay away from me." She says, but her voice sounds too happy, not firm enough. She sits down abruptly in one of the chairs lining the deck, cracking open the book in her hands.

Jack sits down next to her, and says nothing as she tries hard to focus of the words in front of her. _Don't look at him._

"I've had enough of this," Rose declares, slapping her book down, the pages still flung open.

"You're only on page twenty," Jack laughs, looking over.

"Well, I've seen enough."

"What's wrong with the book?" He asks.

"It's just so—so plagued with regret?" She scoffs. "All of these fallen women, crying into their handkerchiefs, whining for a man—"

"You are aware these are books written by men."

This careful reminder is waved aside with a quick hand gesture and Rose is saying, "I just want a proper love affair, and enchanted forests, sailors getting shipwrecked due to singing maidens. Something with lots of murder and illicit sex."

Jack snorts, a loud graceless noise that makes her smile. "Well, and here most people think you're a lady of high class."

Her mouth twists. And starts to say a retort but she stops, watching him with interest; he has taken his jacket off and she can trace the line of the muscles with her eyes in his back as he hunches forward. Rose sucks in a breath and looks away, flushing.

"Come to another party with me," He says to her.

Her smile turns bemused and she arches an eyebrow and says, "You say that so intimately, sir, all we did was dance."

"Tell me that it wasn't more than that for you."

She looks at the ground and then back up at him but she doesn't contradict him.

"I can't, Jack. I'm engaged, this isn't proper—"

"Do you really care if it is?"

She stutters for a moment, Rose Dewitt-Bukater struck speechless by a boy, who would've thought. "I—of course."

Jack gives her a pointed look and she swallows, hard.

"You have been here and there and everywhere it seems, Mr. Dawson, you know that any such relationship between us is impossible."

His eyes avert from hers, and her head follows his descent briefly, hoping to catch a glimpse of his gaze once more, but she doesn't.

"Is it? Tell me that you didn't feel something for me too, look me in the eyes and tell me, Rose."

He still has not run out of beautiful words, she thinks distractedly. Somewhere, between her rejections and Cal's ill manners, he has kept all his poetry. She blames herself for this.

She looks at him, then, and to look at him, surely, is to fall into temptation.

Jack reaches out to touch her cheek but his fingers stop, caught still in the space, hovering just above her cheek, as if they are being hoisted and stalled on marionette strings. And in this case, she is_ _his unseen puppeteer.__

She does not say anything for a minute, looking fevered and breathless, hair falling back from her neck and over the open skin of her clavicle.

Perhaps, she really does not mind men that look and act like this. After all, Rose always finds herself uneasy and out of place around things that are too clean and too perfect, things with no real adventures to tell.

She leans in closer to him, the way she sees it there is only one way to answer his question. So, she leans in with heavy lungs and a hammer pounding in her heart. The space is little and then it is gone, swallowed between his mouth and hers.

Her lips press against his, and she curls her fingers into her jaw, feeling the force of her hunger vibrating in her throat as he kisses her back. His lips are warm and he tastes like sunlight and the ocean. The kiss is slow, careless, and she thinks that she might fall into it. She feels his hands come up to cup her face and her own hands, slide down to his chest.

She leans into him further, into it, his hands slip down to her neck before settling on her waist, and tightening for a moment like a maddening vice, and her palm that rests against his chest can feel him shuddering,_shaking. _Their hands and lips are impossibly close and impossibly familiar for all that it's new, and impossibly necessary.

Her lips stray from his and he inhales sharply.

Her scarlet lipstick is smeared, her heart is certainly trying to beat its way out of her ribcage and she is sure that neither one of them has blinked in ages. This is all she wants, a thousand years between Jack Dawson and Jack Dawson.

Her lashes flicker and her lips part to show a merry slice of teeth, her brain still foggy. She moves to stand and for a moment she thinks that her knees will buckle and she will swoon like a maiden, but her legs are true-proven and she stands upright and rigid.

When she walks away, all that is left is a breath held aching within her lungs and the remnants of their kiss, burning, like a brand, on her lips.


End file.
